The Ontario Liberal Party's pre-election communication strategy is something of a paradox.
It's both predictable and surprising.
Predictable, because the Liberals are doing exactly what we all expected them to do, i.e. they're trying to degrade Progressive Conservative Party leader Doug Ford's political brand; surprising, because they're doing so with such blatant and gleeful enthusiasm.
Consider, for instance, how the chair of the Ontario Liberal Party campaign, David Herle, went on TV recently and called Ford a "d*ck".
Then, after this rude remark unsurprisingly generated controversy, Herle offered the following apology: "Doug Ford has a long history of using derogatory and insulting terms to refer to a wide range of people with whom he disagrees including female journalists, parents of autistic children and many others. No matter how commonplace such conduct might be for Mr. Ford, it is no justification to follow suit."
Doesn't sound too sincere, does it?
In fact, if anything, the lameness of Herle's apology suggests to me that his salty language on TV was no "gaffe" or mistake, but instead was a deliberate and premeditated swipe at Ford.
So basically, if I'm right, it means a high ranking Liberal was willing to publically and brazenly hold his party's main opponent in open contempt.
And that's kind of unusual.
What's even more unusual, however, is that Liberal party leader and Ontario Premier, Kathleen Wynne, is doing the exact same thing.
Recently, while speaking in a room full of reporters, Wynne declared of Ford, "He believes in (an) ugly vicious brand of politics that traffics in smears and lies."
Harsh words for a political party leader, let alone a Premier, to utter.
Now, you might be saying to yourself, that Wynne's tough talk was in point of fact, far from usual; that, for better or worse, such "trash talking" is actually quite common in today's rough and tumble world of political campaigning.
And yes, it's true: politics is full of negativity.
But typically, even though negativity might surround them, political parties still want to avoid being perceived as mud throwers.
In fact, if negative attacks are required against an opponent, a political party would just as soon leave the dirty work to others, such as friendly "Third Parties."
For instance, in the last Ontario provincial election, many of the negative attacks hurled against then PC Ontario Party leader Tim Hudak, were launched by Wynne's union allies.
This allowed Wynne and the Liberals to keep their hands clean.
Plus, even if a party does run its own negative ads, its leader will usually never admit it.
He or she will say something like "Our ads aren't negative, they're just truthful," or "What you call negative ads, we call 'contrast' ads."
And the reason political leaders typically want to avoid linking themselves to negativity, is that there's something of a stigma attached to "going negative."
Simply put, people want politicians to be positive.
Hence, politicians who go negative are always taking a risk; yes, they might succeed in degrading their opponents, but they also might take a hit themselves.
So why then are the Ontario Liberals adopting the counter-intuitive strategy of unabashedly embracing negativity?
My own theory is that Wynne, given her unpopularity, knows she will have to blast away at Ford if she has any hope of winning the next election, so as a consequence she's trying to make a positive virtue out of negativity necessity.
In other words, before the election is officially called, she is trying to justify in advance her forthcoming flood of negative attack ads, not only to her own base, but also to the media.
Note how, when she recently compared Ford to U.S. president Donald Trump, she proclaimed: "And, just like Donald Trump, there's only one way to deal with him. You have stand up to him. Because that's how you deal with a bully."
Essentially, Wynne is saying Ford is such an ogre, such a populist monster, such a threat to civilization that she has no choice but to employ all means necessary to stop him, even if that means she herself must get nasty and vicious.
She wants to fight fire with fire.
So in a way, Wynne's grand strategy is to normalize negativity, to make it an acceptable tactic.
Is it working?
Well, Maclean's columnist Tabatha Southey recently went on Twitter and called Ford a "d*ck", so it seems like at least some of Wynne's media friends are already on board.
Photo Credit: Jeff Burney, Loonie Politics
